The United Red Storm win their second consecutive class 1A regional championship after defeating the North Fulton Wildcats 9-3 at United High School on Monday afternoon. Four of the nine runs that the Red Storm scored came after two outs, after scoring five, two-out runs in their 10-0 regional semifinal win over West Central last Wednesday night.
Both teams garnered ten hits in the game, but United took advantage of four Wildcat errors to get four unearned runs. Three of those unearned runs came in the bottom of the first as the Red Storm jumped out to an early 3-0 lead. North Fulton responded with a pair of runs of their own in the top of the 2nd to cut the deficit to 3-2 after two and a half innings. United would respond, in kind, with a solo run in the bottom of the 2nd, via an Aidan Parkins’ rbi single scoring scoring Parker Cassidy. The Red Storm extended the lead to 6-2 on a Cassidy double in the bottom of the 3rd.
After a solo run by North Fulton in the top of the 4th, United essentially put the game away with a pair of runs in the bottom of the 5th. Colin Jenks blasts his first home run of the season, a towering shot over the leftfield fence, bringing in himself and Cormaic Flynn across the plate.
With a lead of 8-3, the Red Storm get an insurance run in the bottom of the 6th as Jenks gets another rbi, scoring Parkins with the ninth, and final, run of the ballgame.
Aidan Parkins gets the complete game win for United, going all seven innings, giving up ten hits, three earned runs and getting 14 strikeouts. Every time it looked like North Fulton was getting back in the ballgame, Parkins would inevitably end the threat with a strikeout.
United improves its overall record to (21-6) and advance to the class 1A Jacksonville Routt Sectional. The Red Storm will play the co-op of Triopia/Meredosia-Chambersburg/Virginia (19-9-1) on Wednesday afternoon at 4:30. The sectional championship game is set for Saturday morning at 11:00.
United head coach Ryan Molek joined the broadcast crew of Shawn Temple and Kevin Tyrrell on the AM 1330 WRAM postgame show and expressed his deep pride in his ballclub.
For the replay of the entire AM 1330 WRAM radio broadcast of the game, click HERE
